The two blanks might be stuffed by:

Ethiopia and Guatemala.

Let’s dissect the patterns right here…

The first sample to notice is that the final letter earlier than ‘ing’ within the exercise title is the Roman numeral of the variety of the try: skIing (1), diVing (5), boXing (10), tiLing (50), raCing (100), aiDing (500), gaMing (1000). However, that is purely for building functions – it performs no actual additional function within the resolution course of…

What is important, nonetheless, is the connection between (i) the supply phrase for the exercise with out the ‘ing’ (including an ‘e’ when vital, for DIVE, TILE, RACE and GAME), (ii) the capital metropolis of the nation, and (iii) the time. Specifically, in every occasion: once you take away the letters of the supply phrase from the title of the capital metropolis, you might be left with the identical variety of letters because the time talked about. Like so:

Skiing, Finland, 5 o’clock: HEL[S]IN[KI] – SKI = 5 letters;
Diving, Uruguay, 6 o’clock: MONT[EVID]EO – DIVE = 6 letters;
Boxing, Luxembourg, 7 o’clock: LU[X]EM[BO]URG – BOX = 7 letters;
Tiling, Honduras, 7 o’clock: [TE]GUC[I]GA[L]PA – TILE = 7 letters;
Racing, Australia, 4 o’clock: [C]ANB[E]R[RA] – RACE = 4 letters.

What we due to this fact want to search out are…

…nations whose capital cities go away 7 and 9 letters as soon as AID and GAME are faraway from their names, respectively.

The solely sovereign states which fulfill these standards are:

ETHIOPIA: [AD]D[I]S ABABA – AID = 7 letters;
GUATEMALA: [G]U[A]T[EM]ALA CITY – GAME = 9 letters.